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Atlas/Globe of my (unnamed) fantasy world.

Hi Guys,

Just a quick WIP post to get some feedback/ideas. I've just put about 5 hours into drawing mountain ranges. My wife says that you can tell they are mountains, but I wanted to get a view from the more discerning eyes on this forum.

The world is for a story I'm writing, which will take place in the "caribbean basin" area in the world. It's important that I get the rest of the world right to have an idea of the migration patterns of the various races from the "Old World" to the left of the map. My next area to tackle is forests/rainforests. Does anyone have any good ideas on how to present those?

Looking pretty good so far. And yeah, drawing mountains is always a lot of work. They definitely look like mountains to me. As for the size and placememnt of the mountains, they look a little unnatural to me. I think for good placement and size one needs some thought on plate tectonics of the world (but I'm no expert on that. I think there is some info on this here on the forums, can't remember the thread though). For example you can see on this site why there are mountains on what place on earth. Well... Maybe this helps... cheers, DJ

A very good point. The problem with plate tectonics is that you have several very large continental plates, and then several sub-continental plates, which if you delve into it too deeply can cause a myriad of problems.

I have roughly divided my planet into 8 continental plates now, and for the majority of the mountain ranges, they work, but as you rightly say, there are a few that seem unnatural. Fortunately my main mountainous region (on left hand landmass) can remain (with some slight tweaks) but some need to go, and I'll have to think of other ways to create natural borders. Forests should work.

What would you suggest for the mountain scale? I'm not very artistic, so creating larger/smaller scale mountain ranges on a map this big just confuses me :/

It's hard for me to be sure because of the small size of the image, but it looks like the X-shaped range on the left-hand continent is just two crossing single ranges. You might 'roughen it up' a bit by making two or three smaller, parallel ranges for each, bumping into the larger ones here and there to create gorges/big valleys and a more natural-looking ripple-effect as if (I'm assuming) four plates meet there and continually churn up the land. As it is now, it just looks too neat.

In some other areas, particularly that ginormous area in the northern hemisphere on the right, it just doesn't seem natural to me that every square inch of land is mountainous; if you look at maps of Earth, even the most mountainous terrain doesn't take up millions of square miles. Not that that couldn't happen on your planet, but I think it'd wreak havoc with some of your weather systems.

I love love love the continent shapes though, and the colors you're using. Just wish the image was bigger so I could get a better look at it.

I agree with the mountain cross - it looks to artificial, but you got a nice map going

A little hint - when you post press "go advanced" - this will give you a button called "manage attachments" - here you can upload your pictures to the guild servers. Then we get thumbs of your pictures (when the thumbnailer works ... or a few days later when the site updates all) which will make it easier to see what you do. (and some people might not bother to go outside the guild to check your work).
Secondly - if you ever should remove those pics from flickr (or if the site is down for some reason) no one can see them any more, leaving this thread rather empty.
So post here and everything works much better

I've amended the map after adding a layer for tectonic plates. The very mountainous region to the north of the left hand landmass has been retained, although modified. There are 3 plates pushing together here. This has left me with an area where the plates are moving apart over a landmass (to the south of the landlocked sea on the left landmass). I was considering adding a volcanic region here with a chasm.

Anyway, here it is:

Cheers

Tyo Solo

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
- Henry S. Haskins -

Okay, so I've played with the map a little bit more. I've added more textures and shading, which has helped me around the problem with forests, etc. There is a chasm where the land is spreading in one area. Oh, and rivers, I've added major rivers.

Anyway:

Regards

Tyo

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
- Henry S. Haskins -

Something about mountains stretching directly across pieces of land, like a wall connecting 2 oceans, just doesn't look natural. I can't prove that it is wrong but it just looks wrong. Colors and style look good, though.

If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)

Well, the Pyrenees are pretty much a "wall of mountains" across the land, but those are exceptional. You can have such ranges, but when you have more of those than you have ranges running roughly parallel to the coast, it does strain plausibility.